Road Trip - Part 1 "The Beginning"

From Sept. 6 - 13, we took a family vacation to California. We drove to Irvine, San Diego and then went to Yosemite. Since it was such a jam packed trip, I will have to post our travels in a few posts. So, I guess I should start from the beginning...

We left at 2 am on Sept. 6, so Hunter could sleep for a lot of the drive down. We were doing great... well, I don't know if I can say "we" because me and Hunter slept thru all of Utah while Josh drove and I know he was exhausted... But we stopped in Mesquite, NV to get gas. Because of the time difference, it was 6:15am. We hadn't accounted for the time difference into our calculations but we figured something would be open for breakfast. Well, we filled up and went to start the car and... nothing. Didn't turn over at all - just clicked. We were like, "WHAT?!? This car is only 3 years old! Why isn't it starting? CRAP!"

By this time, Hunter was awake, so we were trying to figure out what to do. We had just bought jumper cables for just an occassion, so we had someone try to jump us... again, didn't start. It was getting hot and we were parked in the sun, so Josh decided that we should push the car into the shade. Josh told me to push on the front of the car, so I did exactly as I was told - so I thought. He just sat there and stared at me and said, while laughing, "Uh, you have to push in the direction that the wheels are going, not against them..." Well, that made sense looking back (duh) but since I have never "pushed" a car before, I had no idea what I was doing! The attendant at the gas station could see we were obviously having issues, so he came out and helped Josh push the car into the shade.

Now, it was decision time. What do we do? There was an Auto Zone a half a mile down the road that could check out our battery for free, but it didn't open for another hour. And we would have to push the car down there - and since I am apparently a "car pushing" dummy, that would have been disastrous. OR we could call someone and tow the car since the problem was possibly an alternator or starter - which would take who knows how long to fix. Well, we decided that a tow was the best option, so we called the only place open. The guy came and towed the car to his shop about a mile away. The drive in the tow truck was interesting because Hunter got to ride in Josh's lap - which he thought was the funnest thing ever!

Well, we get to the shop and they test the battery and it was completely dead. So, they replaced it (which took all but 5 minutes) and we were good to go. Apparently, when we plugged in the GPS into the car about 5 minutes before we stopped for gas, that had thrown the old battery over the edge... lol.

Josh went to pay for everything while I strapped Hunter into his car seat. Josh came out of the shop shaking his head and got into the car. This is obviously not a good sign after coming out of a mechanic's shop, so I asked, "How much was it?" He said, "A rape... $250." SAY WHAT?!? They charged us $100 for the tow (for 1 mile of towing - ridiculous), $40 for labor (for the 5 minutes of labor - also ridiculous) and $110 for the battery (not so ridiculous but whatever...)

We arrived in Mesquite at 6:15am and left at 7:30am - not bad for all of the issues we had. We decided that it really sucked that we had started our trip with that huge unexpected cost but we were determined to not let it get us down. So, we just put it out of our minds and continued on our journey. Looking back, the cheaper option would have been to wait for Auto Zone to open but how were we going to get the vehicle down there? What a conundrum...

To be continued...